Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Carrington Lawsuit Settled

The Carrington lawsuit, the most significant of the lawsuits against Duke, was settled today. No settlement terms were released--but given the overt hostility of the 4th Circuit to the lawsuit, and the ruling by Judge Beaty affirming that the student bulletin and faculty handbook aren't legally worth the paper they're written on, the decision can't be seen as much of a surprise.

The McFadyen lawsuit, for the three plaintiffs represented by Bob Ekstrand, remains alive. This news nonetheless means that chances of Duke being held accountable in court for its mistreatment of its students are very slim indeed.

8 comments:

If the courts don't think the civil rights of the lacrosse players were violated, and if their attorneys won't protest Beaty's rulings

(among others, that the players' race precludes their right to sue public officials; that a SANE has a duty to a "patient", but not to accused persons or even the court; that a contract isn't a contract; that Nifong should be taken seriously when he alleges $180 million in liabilities; etc.)

then I guess even a case as obvious as the Duke lacrosse case can be reduced to microscopic proportions.

But now the people of the Fourth Circuit will have to live with Beaty's and the Fourth Circuit's rulings.

Given that Sandusky was "convicted of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, unlawful contact with minor, corruption of minors, endangering a child's welfare" for his contact with Victim 8 (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/22/breakdown-sandusky-verdicts-by-victim/)--the victim Id'd by the janitor's testimony, I'd hardly say that Freeh (whose report didn't use a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard) can be faulted for accepting the janitor's remarks.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review